Global News Podcast - Bangladesh: Muhammad Yunus takes over as interim leader

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Nobel Peace laureate says his first talk is to restore law and order after the violent unrest that toppled Sheikh Hasina. Also: Catalan police are searching for the separatist leader Carles Puigdemont after his surprise return from exile; and the Moroccan B-Girl taking part in the very first Olympic breaking competition.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 13 Hours GMT on Thursday 8th August, these are our main stories.

The economist Mohamed Younis arrives in Bangladesh to lead a caretaker government after weeks of turmoil. Carlos Puigdemont is back in Barcelona. The Catalan separatist leader has been addressing supporters and risking arrest. The mayor of Nagasaki in Japan defends his decision not to invite Israel to the annual atomic bomb commemoration. Also in this podcast, Joe Biden warns there may not be a peaceful transfer of power if Donald Trump loses the US presidential election. And... It's going to be a good impact in Morocco because girls are so scared to do breaking now.

So I guess it's going to be like a support for them. The Moroccan b-girl taking part in the very first Olympic breaking competition. Mohamed Younis, soon to be the new interim leader of Bangladesh, has landed back in Dhaka. I feel good. I'm back. A lot of work to be done. People are excited. Know that something new opportunities have arrived. What is your message for people here? Discipline. Discipline, hard work and get it done. The 84-year-old economist and Nobel laureate smiled broadly as he was greeted with flowers.

He'll be sworn in with a new cabinet later. It's a quick turnabout of events after protests forced the resignation of the previous Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday after 15 years in office. Mr Younis said it was those protesters' efforts that had given the nation a second independence, a freedom which he said now had to be protected. Our correspondent Akbar Hussain in Dhaka told me more about how Mr Yunus was received. When he arrived here, he was surrounded by student leaders and before that he was welcomed and greeted by the army chief,

Bangladesh's naval chief and the air force chief and some other security forces chief. And Mr. Yunus said that, you know, this is the time to rebuild the country and he will have to organize many things. And he urged people not to indulge in any violence. He said that, you know, he has many things to do. So if people indulge in violence, then he described it as a revolution. He said that then the result of the revolution might be negative.

That's why he is asking people to remain calm. And he said that no revenge should be taken because he said that, you know, Bangladesh is a country which has an immense potential. And if we do anything which might jeopardize our potential, you know, then the result of the revolution would be very negative. That's why he is urging people to cooperate him. Certainly a very warm welcome for him. Muhammad Yunus is an economist, a high profile one. Do we think he has the skills to be a political leader? This is a very big question because so far many people think that the

Professor Muhammad Yunus is the best option for Bangladesh so far because there is a political vacuum. Sheikh Hasina fled the country. Another leader, Khaled Zia, she is not well physically and her party is in a disorganized position. So many people think that, you know, Bangladesh should be managed by someone who has a vision. And they think that Professor Yunus is the right person. But, you know, we don't know yet how long he will continue. There is no specific time. It might be one year. It might be two years.

It might be six months. But we don't have any clear picture yet. But the thing is that this is certain. It's going to be a non-parting interim government. There will be no political affiliation of the people who will be included in this government. So the student leaders, they think that, you know, a free, fair elections could be held in the leadership of Professor Mohamed Younis. Akbar Hussain in Dhaka. After nearly seven years in exile, the former separatist leader of Catalonia, Carlos Puigdemont, has returned to Spain

despite the threat of an outstanding arrest warrant for alleged embezzlement. According to the Catalan public broadcaster, police have launched an operation to find and arrest Mr. Puigdemont. So far, he seems to have evaded that, though. One police officer has been arrested on suspicion of helping him to escape. All this shortly after he addressed supporters outside the Catalan parliament,

saying any crackdown on the pro-independence movement would harm the credibility of Spanish democracy. We should not be fooled. We should not be deceived. It is not, it was not, and it never will be a crime to hold a referendum. And it never will be a crime to obey the mandate of the Parliament of Catalonia. Inside the Parliament building, a debate is taking place ahead of the swearing-in of the new head of the regional government there. I got an update on the police operation from our Europe regional editor, Danny Eberhard.

It's an extraordinary situation. So there he appeared in central Barcelona to a hero's welcome, Andrew. People shouting for independence, calling him president. His old title is the head of the region there. And then he disappeared. Now the police are trying to locate him. They're setting up roadblocks around parts of Barcelona on key roads and elsewhere in Catalonia. And they say that he's believed to have travelled in a white car. And they're doing this under the nickname

Operation Cage. But it's an extraordinary situation. Meanwhile, inside the Catalan Parliament, the investor debate continues as to whether Salvador Illa, the socialist who's a part of the governing ruling party, becomes the next head of the region. And he is not in favour of independence. It'll be the first time in 10 years that a non-independent supporter headed the region. Today's events are like some kind of movie in the making. But that's the whole point of the timing, isn't it? We're about to get a Catalan leader who doesn't favour independence. And hey, presto, Carlos Puigdemont is back on the scene. Yeah, I think he felt he had to come back

now after spending nearly seven years trying to resist all attempts to extradite him to Spain from self-imposed exile. Now the key thing here is that Spain's government and parliament passed an amnesty law for Catalan independence leaders, pro-independence leaders. That passed through the parliamentary process, but then the Supreme Court threw a spanner in the works. It said that part of that charge of embezzlement did not apply to Carlos Puigdemont and other Catalan separatists. So that's why the arrest warrant is still there. And that, of course, is what Puigdemont is doing, is saying basically Spain's government has passed an amnesty law, but then he's not giving amnesty.

So that really affects the credibility, as you mentioned, of Spain's democracy. Danny Eberhard there. Since I spoke to Danny, the authorities in Barcelona have said that roadblock operation has been called off. The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki has defended his decision not to invite Israel's ambassador to a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the US atomic bombing of the city in 1945. His comments came after ambassadors from several Western countries, including the US and Britain, confirmed they would also skip the service in

solidarity with Israel. Shaima Khalil is in Tokyo. Nagasaki's Mayor Shiro Suzuki said security reasons, including potential demonstrations against the war in Gaza, were behind his decision not to invite Israel to the atomic bombing commemoration ceremony. A spokesperson for the British Embassy in Tokyo confirmed to the BBC that Ambassador Julia Longbottom will not attend the ceremony in Nagasaki. Britain's ambassador had said the decision not to invite Israel created an unfortunate and misleading equivalency with Russia and Belarus,

the only other countries not invited. The U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel will also not attend. An embassy statement said the mayor of Nagasaki had politicized the event by snubbing Israel. Gilad Cohen, Israel's ambassador, who was invited to attend a memorial ceremony in Hiroshima on Tuesday, said Nagasaki's decision sent a wrong message to the world. In June, Mr Suzuki had sent a letter to the Israeli embassy calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Three years ago, the Taliban retook the Afghan capital Kabul after the withdrawal of US-led international forces. I was live on the BBC World Service as that happened.

On the day, people were predicting exactly what followed, the gradual removal of women from public life. Senior UN officials are leading a campaign to recognise it as gender apartheid. Crassie Twigg from BBC Monitoring looks at the historical context of the current ruler's fixation with women. In August 2021, the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. Unlike their first rule in the 90s, they now control the whole country. The consequences for women have been profound.

Women are not allowed to go to schools, to universities, to parks, gyms, beauty parlours. They are not allowed to work. They are not allowed to travel alone. Their life is like a prison. Shazia Hayeh regularly talks to women in Afghanistan for her programmes for BBC Pashto. She presents an educational programme too for Afghan children called DARS, which aims to fill some of the vacuum created by the Taliban's ban on schooling for girls beyond sixth grade. Salamuna. The BBC DARS means listen. One girl told us that DARS is like a light at the end of a dark tunnel.

The Taliban's education policies haven't just affected girls. There have been strident efforts to mould the next generation of men. Haroon Rahmani is watching the country for BBC monitoring from London. The Taliban are graduates of the madrasas from the tribal areas of Pakistan. They have repurposed and turned most of the educational buildings, schools and some of the bases which were used by the US and its allies to madrasas. And they also allocate more funds for madrasa than a school. To understand how the Taliban see their place in the world and to find the seeds of their animosity towards gender equality,

we need to go back in time. This is Barry Siddique from BBC Monitoring. In October of 1928, one of Afghanistan's first reformer governments was led by a king, Amon Lohan. He was directly inspired by the West. He brought about some serious reforms in terms of prohibiting polygamy, bringing about a minimum marriage age for women, creating a specific hospital for women, and introducing a handful of girls' schools mostly confined to

Kabul. These reforms triggered a mass backlash. Several tribes rose up against him, and Amun-ul-Khan was portrayed as being a threat to Islam and overthrown accordingly. But I think what we can see from this sequence of events in Afghan history is how women became a proxy for the nation's image of itself. According to Barry's analysis, a long list of foreign interventions has created a deep suspicion among Afghans towards foreign values. It was established in the mind of more conservative Afghans, this connection between reforms around gender and foreign intervention. Because since 1979, we've seen two successive interventions by foreign powers, first by the Soviet Union in the 80s, and then following on by the Americans, both of which in different ways were

justified on the basis of wanting to develop Afghanistan and bring about a more liberal and Western-inspired gender norms. The two decades of US-led intervention introduced many freedoms. In 2021, the Taliban inherited a society where women too felt entitled to their rights. Afghanistan had some brave women and they went to streets and they had their protests. According to some reports, some of them were detained. And also there were some claims about torture and bad behaviours. The resistance was eventually muzzled. In the meantime, senior UN officials have pushed for what they call the Taliban's gender apartheid to be recognised as a crime against humanity.

And here's the view from the Taliban. Women, women, women. Now the women are not a complete part of our economy. So if they will sit, 50% of our population, if they will sit at home, so the next 50% will take care of them. That report by Krassi Twigg from BBC Monitoring. You can hear more about that story by searching for The Global Jigsaw wherever you get your podcasts. Still to come...

We have recovered chemical substances, liquids, explosive devices and technical equipment. Austrian intelligence services reveal more details of an attack that was planned for a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. Thank you, Anna. and the Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. President Biden has expressed his concern there may not be a peaceful transfer of power if Donald Trump loses the presidential election in November.

He was speaking to CBS News in his first interview since stepping down from the race. If Trump loses, I'm not confident at all. He means what he says. We don't take him seriously. He means it. All the stuff about if we lose, there'll be a bloodbath. You can't love your country only when you win. Alex Ritson got reaction from our North America correspondent, Peter Bowes. It's not a surprise when Donald Trump first made the bloodbath comment, President Biden responded then by accusing Mr. Trump of fermenting political violence. He posted on X, it's clear that this guy wants another January the 6th.

So Mr. Biden is really just now echoing those comments in a new interview where he was asked about the transition process, clearly expressing concern that Donald Trump might again claim that the election was stolen if he loses. One other thing to say in terms of context is that Donald Trump made that remark while speaking about the potential loss of American car manufacturing jobs to foreign countries.

And his campaign said his bloodbath comment should be taken in that context, that the former president was saying that if Joe Biden won the election, he was still the candidate then, that it would be an economic bloodbath for the US car industry. A very different meaning, although, as we're hearing, really, that comment has been widely interpreted, including, it seems, by President Biden to have more sinister and perhaps violent undertones. Yeah, but it's not just the bloodbath comment, is it?

He said a lot of things during campaigning. One of the other ones, he said there wouldn't be another election in the US if he didn't win. Is that just talk? He said, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote, which certainly raised a few eyebrows. It certainly is talk, and it's the kind of talk that, honestly, not many people really understand what he was saying. The Democrats said the comment implied that Mr. Trump would end elections in the United States if he won a second term. And it prompted debates about whether democracy itself was under threat.

It was a vow to end democracy, according to Kamala Harris's campaign. But the Trump campaign, they had an alternative explanation. A spokesperson said he was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American. So it's political talk that many people struggle to decipher. And given the fast-moving news cycles, as we call them here, it's probably already been forgotten by most Americans until, of course, it is brought up again by most likely the Democrats and perhaps in one of the debates in the next few weeks. Now we know who the four

candidates are, what are the opinion polls telling us? Well, it's too early to get a reliable picture of what Americans think now about Tim Walz, the running mate for Kamala Harris. Those polls will, I guess, be being carried out as we speak. And I expect the first substantive assessments on the state of play to be revealed probably at the weekend, most likely Sunday morning. But we know from very significant earlier polls suggesting that nine out of 10 American adults didn't know enough about Governor Walls or had no opinion about him. He isn't well known across the country. But I think more generally, since Kamala Harris took over from Joe Biden as the Democrats' choice of candidate,

the polls have certainly tightened considerably when they weigh her chances against Donald Trump, who had managed to pull ahead by beyond any margin of error when he was up against Joe Biden. And we've got the Democratic Convention in a couple of weeks. And I think only then, when the dust settles on the convention, we'll get a more realistic view from the polls, probably as we enter September, when traditionally Americans really begin to take notice of the presidential campaign. Our North America correspondent Peter Bowes. We've been getting more information today about a planned extremist attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. Her three forthcoming shows in the Austrian capital were cancelled on Wednesday after the

plot was revealed. At a news conference, the director of state security, Omar Hajawi-Pirkner, said one of the attacker's aims was to kill himself and a large number of others outside the stadium using explosives and stabbing weapons. We have recovered chemical substances, liquids, explosive devices and technical equipment. The results of the investigation show that the precursor hydrogen peroxide, which is used to make explosives, was in use here. And this explosive was also manufactured. The 19-year-old main perpetrator has since made a full confession. A second man, age 17, has been arrested. There are also reports of a 15-year-old boy being detained. I found out more from our correspondent in Vienna, Bethany Bell. We just heard from the authorities that he's made a confession saying that he planned to attack a

crowd at the concert. It was a suicide attack, we understand, that was planned and with the weapons that you just heard mentioned. And this, of course, was the reason why the organisers decided to cancel the concerts here, much to the disappointment of the fans. And in fact, I'm standing in a group of fans in the centre of Vienna right now, and there is a real sense of disappointment. One group of girls from the UK told me that they cried when they heard the news, that they understood that safety had to come above everything. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I'm taking my teenage daughter

to see Taylor Swift in London later this month, and if that gig that she'd been looking forward to were cancelled, I'm trying to imagine what that would be like. So there's obviously disappointment, as you say, but also there must be some degree of relief that this could have been a horrible situation if it had gone ahead. Absolutely. One girl told me that when she first heard the news about the arrests and

the concert was still planning to go ahead at that point, she said she was almost relieved when she heard that it had been cancelled because she was frightened. Other people, though, have said that they have been waiting for this for such a long time. They've flown across the world. I've met Americans here who say that they came all the way from Oklahoma to be here. So enormous, enormous disappointments. But now the fans that have grouped here in Vienna say that they'll keep on celebrating and do what Taylor would do, which is to sing. Bethany Bell in Vienna.

A new study in the Netherlands looking into how our brains work has concluded that humans enjoy intense mental effort much less than previously thought, even if the results are rewarding, and that more rewards are needed to motivate people to achieve their goals. Victoria Uwanda spoke to one of the authors of the study, Eliana Vecena, from Radboud University. What inspired us in the beginning was that intuitively we do have this anecdotal experience that sometimes under certain circumstances we may actually enjoy

engaging in difficult things. So things, for example, about doing crosswords or sudoku or playing chess or even now that we are all watching the Olympics. All these athletes were not only physical, but also, you know, taking a lot of planning and commitments. But there's an intuition that while we may enjoy exerting efforts, that's exactly what we tested. Are there circumstances where we do enjoy? And our results focus particularly on the feelings. They really said that this is not the case. We actually do not enjoy it, irrespective of what type of task we're doing or what's

our background or education level. It really looks like that no matter the circumstances, we actually always dislike exerting mental effort. So what does that then tell us about us humans and what we are able to do and not to do? Yeah, it kind of tells us that actually motivation to achieve our goals is really critical to get us going so that we are able to overcome these negative feelings

that we experience while we exert effort as long as we care enough about what we can obtain in the end, the goal we can achieve, whether we can get a reward for it, or whether the experience we have as a consequence is rewarding. So basically, our end goal is what compensates for all the cost of the efforts that goes into it while we're doing it. And pretty much that's what we're seeing at the Olympics with all these people who spend their lifetimes getting to the goal of winning a medal. Yeah, exactly. And I thought it was also quite interesting to see in these Olympics a lot of attention given to athletes that perhaps didn't perform as well as they would have liked, but also

in interviews declared that they valued their accomplishments, which is really great considering the amount of effort that they put into such preparation and highlights that not only a concrete consequence like a medal, but also, for example, self-confidence or being happy with oneself. These are all things that can be rewarding. Eliana Vecena. Now, among the Olympians hoping to get some enjoyment from their efforts are break dancers, or as they're professionally called,

b-boys and b-girls. It's the first time the sport of breaking makes it into the Olympics. The two-day competition begins on Friday and features athletes from more than a dozen countries. Among them, 24-year-old b-girl El Moumany from Morocco, who as well as showing off her breaking skills, is also hoping to inspire other women in the region. Nishat Ladha has the story.

You feel like the whole Moroccans are behind you and like, go, go, go. So this is an honour for me to represent my country at the first time breaking in the Olympics. Meet Fatima Zahra, also known as Beagle El Mamouni. Her friends introduced her to breaking when she was 15 and she hasn't looked back. We went to just a garden and we started to do some freezes and then I was like, wow, I love this. As a Moroccan woman, a shy Fatima Zahra came alive as b-girl El Mamouni. But she did encounter negativity, even from her dad, who still helped her financially.

I wanted to continue breaking and I was like, I need to show people that maybe the b-girls can do this too. Women like in the Arab world, they just need to know like breaking, it's not a bad thing. It's not something like a shame because it's super good for your health too. And then on the day of the Olympic qualifiers, her dad was taken to hospital for surgery and everything changed. I was really sad because I get this call at the same day of the African Championship and I was like, can I dance?

And my dad is in the hospital and I was super sad. And then he called me and he was like, if you want me to be like is in the hospital, and I was super sad. And then he called me, and he was like, if you want me to be in good health and you want me to be happy, just do it and win it for me. And I did it for him, actually. He was watching me at the hospital, like live, so emotional. I got this medallion, and I went to him, to the hospital, and I was like, this is for you, and he was super happy.

He said, my heart was about to stop when I saw you in this competition. I was so happy. Beagle El Mamouni can draw inspiration from Selma Benani, president of the Moroccan Federation, which encompasses breaking. And Benani is a huge advocate for women's sport. Hip-hop and breaking have been my fight since the founding of this federation. We are in Morocco. The culture of hip-hop comes from the USA, exactly from the Bronx, and it was born in the streets. They created the battles. Battles means that they talk to each other through physical dance, and they express their feelings, but they also express hope in life. And that's why the slogan of breaking is peace and love.

That's something I love. So I'm not just proud. It's a word that I want. We used to dance just following the rhythm and the freestyling on beats. But when it becomes professional and go to the Olympics, a lot of things changed. Her coach Namo, known as B-Boy Cow,

is targeting the training. Focusing on execution, focusing on the flow, the form, the shape of the moves, a lot of things that would make a B-Girl or a B-Boy reaching the level of the Olympics. Olympic breaking will be staged at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, where dancers will compete in one-on-one battles to music picked by a DJ. Nine judges will vote at the end of each battle to decide the champion. And whether she wins the medal or not, one thing's for sure, Beagle El Mamouni is inspiring a new generation of dancers across the region.

It's going to be a good impact in Morocco because girls are so scared to do break-in now because they will always say, the community is looking at us like this or like that. So I guess it's going to be support for them. We all hope to be in the podium, but no matter what, we're going to practice and we're going to, how we say, eat the floor and practice because we are going to the Olympics.

Nishat Ladha reporting. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this edition, drop us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. On X, you'll find us as at Global News Pod. This edition was produced by Judy Frankel and mixed by Jack Wilfan.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thanks for listening. And until next time, goodbye. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening Thank you. plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.